Mozart, Bach and Beethoven leave solar system in Voyager spacecraft

A selection of classical music travelling on the Voyager spacecraft at 100,000mph has made it outside our solar system, and is now 11.6 billion miles away from Earth.

Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent to study the outer planets, and has now travelled further than anyone or anything in history. It's so far away it takes 17 hours for a radio signal sent from the craft to be picked up on Earth.

Along with greetings in 55 languages, music submitted by countries across the world was transferred onto a gold vinyl record to serve as a message to any life form that might someday stumble across the spacecraft. The out-of-this-world playlist includes jazz by Louis Armstrong, traditional tunes from different continents, and classical music by great composers including Bach, Stravinsky, Beethoven and Mozart.

The spacecraft will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years. By this time, the plutonium power sources will have run out of power and the 20W transmitters will have stopped broadcasting a signal, so there's no way of knowing whether alien life forms will have discovered the music - or worked out how to play it.